And if you value the ‘bang for your buck’ then don’t use macOS but get a Windows box 
Expecting Blender to support old OS’s like this is a waste of resources better spent elsewhere. Spinning on this thread is wasting developer resources. The decision has been made, as mentioned keep a branch alive if you wish.
I’m sorry, but that is not correct. Apple Silicon Macs are the best bang for buck, hands down. Windows PCs don’t get competitive until you increase the price point at least twofold, and then you’re also running a machine that spits out tons of heat, and chews up the watts like there’s no tomorrow.
My M1 Mac mini renders in Blender way better than my six year old RX 480 ever did. And now the RX 480 is dropped like a sack of moldy tangerines, because OpenCL support is gone. Good riddance anyway, because in its last throes, it was taking down my entire desktop with GPU crashes every time I attempted even reasonably basic render jobs.
Seriously let’s not get into an Apple war here fan boyz! And please remember what a smiley is meant to indicate, like gentle kidding?
Otherwise I won’t even bother to argue with the idea that ARM > x64. I’ve been developing professionally in A&D on ARM for a decade (think machines worth more than your yearly salary), I know the processor intimately and have worked with the company, so you’re wasting your breath. Hint, there’s a difference between actual processing power and apparent, especially when you compare to a, uh, RX480?
Let me introduce you to my friend Linux Mint, it is awesome! You can have Windows 7 and use Linux for Blender in dual boot mode.
By all means, drop $3000 on a GTX 3090, since that is also a cost effective solution. Or a brand new laptop with a GTX 3080M. Since you’ll be rendering stuff, power usage is no object, either. I’m sorry I fanboy’d my $900 on something I find decent. I should have held out forever for when GPUs would drop to those prices again.
Given it’s getting a bit off topic, and there is nothing to be said about win7 support that hasn’t already been said, i’d say we’re done here.